There is a former student in my life that I could write reams about. My parents took her in because her home life was so sucky and ended up fostering her for three years before they turned her over to the Child Protection Agency they were so worn out.
She’s been diagnosed bi-polar, PTSD, acute anxiety, chronic anxiety, and schizoid disorder. She is a mess of problems. The worst is that for all she appears normal, she barely functions in the grown up world. As a sixteen year old foster child, she decided she didn’t want to have to do what her foster parents told her, so she petitioned for early emancipation, and thereby lost all the benefits (free medical care, free psychiatric care, free tuition, free bus passes, etc.) she’d previously had. She spent two years sleeping on friends’ couches and wearing out both welcomes and friendships.
She got married at eighteen, and her husband joined the Army. Then, oops, she got pregnant, but that was okay, because it would bring her and her husband closer together. Right. Except for the part where any time she’s angry at someone, she posts how much she hates them on FB. She wants to leave her husband, take the baby, and go live with a friend in Texas, a hundred miles from any city.
She’s never held down a job longer than three months. She can’t get a job now. She doesn’t take her medications regularly, and when I asked her how the baby was doing, I got “oh, he’s fine.”
What first time mom with a five month old baby actually says “oh, he’s fine” instead of regaling me with tales of food, poopies, smiles, laughs, sleeping, and other amazing baby tricks?
My parents are terrified that she’s going to show up on their doorstep, baby in arm, and expect to be taken back in again. She is a perpetual motion drama machine, and while I held out hope for several years that she would mature and get better, that just isn’t going to happen. There is nothing I can do to make things better, just watch the wreckage from the sideline. sigh